Das Liebesverbot, Wagner’s second completed opera, marked
an advance upon his first, Die Feen,
in one respect. It was performed in his lifetime – once, in Magdeburg, on 29
March 1836, in what Wagner, in Mein Leben,
would describe as a ‘totally muddled performance’, such that the ‘material ...
remained utterly obscure to the public’. For the second performance, there
appeared to be only three people in the stalls, ‘Frau Gottschalk with her husband
and a very conspicuous Polish Jew in full costume.’ Drama of a rather different
kind, however, ensued behind the stage:

There, Herr Pollert, the husband of my
leading lady (who was taking the part of Isabella), had run across the second
tenor, Schreiber, a very young and handsome man who was to sing my Claudio,
against whom the offended husband had long nursed a secret rancour born of
jealousy. ... My Cluadio took such a pasting ... that the unfortunate fellow had
to retreat into the dressing-room, his face bloodied. Isabella received news of
this, and plunged after her raging husband in desperation, only to be so
soundly cuffed by him that she went into a fit. The uproar among the ensemble
soon knew no bounds: people took sides, and it wouldn’t have taken much more to
produce a free-for-all, for it seemed that this unhappy evening offered
everyone a suitable occasion to pay off mutual grievances once and for all. It
was soon evident that the two who had been subjected to Herr Pollert’s ‘ban on
love’ were quite incapable of mounting the stage that day. The stage director
was sent before the curtain to advise the curiously select gathering in the
auditorium that ‘owing to unforeseen difficulties’ the performance of the opera
could not take place.

With
that came ‘the end’ of Wagner’s ‘career as conductor and composer of operas in
Magdeburg. The story might make rather a good opera in itself, or at least a
metatheatrical conceit for a staging of Wagner’s own ‘ban on love’ opera: Die Novize von Palermo, as it had to be
called, in order to satisfy the Lenten censor. (Wagner’s assurance that it had
been ‘adapted from a very serious Shakespearean play,’ Measure for Measure, also seems to have helped.)

Such,
in this co-production with Bayreuth – two performances took place there not in
the Festspielhaus as part of the Festival proper, but in the Oberfrankenhalle,
in July – was not, however, to be the case. There were, moreover, many more
people in the Leipzig audience; indeed, the stalls on this occasion were close
to full. Let us leave, though, on one side my Konzept, which, should they ever deign to stage the work, I am
happy to let one of our English companies have for nothing. The Leipzig staging
has some powerful moments, though some that left me a little bewildered too.
Jürgen Kirner’s set designs provide an impressive backdrop, especially for the monochrome
coldness of the hypocritical viceroy Friedrich’s office, and the convent scene,
in which Isabella, newly admitted, receives news from Luzio, of her brother
Claudio’s impending ‘death penalty for an amorous escapade’ (Mein Leben). There, relative abstraction
and a sign of the Cross strike just the right balance between the serenity of
the setting and a warning that Wagner’s Young German concerns wish to promote
a ‘victory of free sensualism over puritanical hypocrisy’, as the composer put
it in his Autobiographical Sketch for
Heinrich Laube’s Zeitung für die elegente
Welt. (Laube himself was quite an influence upon this and subsequent Wagner dramas, Tannhäuser
included.) That, presumably, was also the justification for a recurring screen emblazoned
with what seemed to be photographs of a lush, tropical rainforest, complete with insects. Sicilian heat might, however, have been more clearly expressed with
something a little closer to home. Giant masks for the forbidden and ultimately
victorious Carnival – though is it ultimately to be victorious? – offer an
intriguing hint that apparent licence may cast its own dialectical
authoritarianism.

Tuomas Pursio (Friedrich)

Without
a stronger overall directorial conception, though, a post-modern æsthetic, with
hippyish costumes for the apostles of free(-ish) love, older dress for the
forces of authority, something more ‘timeless’ for Isabella and her friend
Mariana in the convent, and so on, does not necessarily add up to the sum of
its parts, let alone something more than them. For Aron Stiehl, in his
direction of the work, sometimes seems more intent upon ironising it than
engaging with Wagner’s concerns; irony and Wagner are if not quite impossible partners
than bedfellows for whom comfort is of little concern. In what is, perhaps, in
musical terms the composer’s weakest completed opera, he probably needs a
little more help than this. Silly dances for the chorus send up rather than
probe Wagner’s not-entirely-successful attempt at Italianate levity. The score
itself insists that, whatever his would-be libertinism, he cannot let go of the
Germanic roots that had served him so well in Die Feen and would soon do so again. Such is, of course, at odds
with Wagner’s alleged dramatic concerns: Friedrich and German regulation are
very much the enemy. The concluding surprise, in which Friedrich re-emerges,
apparently to take command once again of the situation and meet the King, is an
interesting step, quite at odds with Wagner’s crowd-dispensed justice, in which
the viceroy is permitted by the crowd, far more clement than he, to lose himself
in the carnival celebration. It would, however, register more powerfully as a
questioning of the work – in any case, something of a difficult task, when
relatively few in the audience will know the opera – were it better prepared. It
jars – such, at any rate, was my experience in the theatre, as opposed to my post hoc attempt at explication – rather
than convinces dramatically. Still, Personenregie
is in itself accomplished; one gains a sense that the characters are doing what
they have been asked.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra offered a typically deep and burnished sound, though there were
moments when ensemble was not as tight as one might have hoped for. Conductor
Matthias Foremny may well, however, have been at fault in that respect, for his
reading often seemed a little unsure whether to stress the Teutonic or the
Italianate, not only falling been two stools, which, given Wagner’s score,
might well be fair enough, even fruitful, but hesitant. The (relatively)
well-known Overture, in which most of Wagner’s more memorable melodic ideas put
in an appearance, was a case in point. It may be unfair to draw a comparison
with Wolfgang Sawallisch’s excellent Munich recording (or indeed, his
Philadelphia recording of the Overture alone), but the conviction required to
harness disparate elements, to channel them into a more-or-less convincing
sequence, if not quite an organic whole, was missing here. Foremny’s stopping
and starting was to a certain extent overcome as the performance progressed;
however, I could not help but wonder what might have come from a less Kapellmeister-ish account, such, for
instance, as Ulf Schirmer had offered earlier in the year, for Leipzig’s splendid production of Die Feen.

Christiane Libor had played
Isabella on the first night; for this second-night performance,she was replaced by Lydia Easley. It seemed
to take a little while for Easley fully to get into her stride, and there were
a few questionable moments of intonation when it came to coloratura, but hers
was on the whole an impressive, convincing performance. Olena Tokar made a
fine impression as Mariana, the wronged, abandoned wife of Friedrich,
especially in a beautifully-sung account of her second-act aria. Daniel Kirch
and Mark Adler offered much to admire as Claudio and Luzio; it would be good to
hear more of them in later, more substantial Wagner roles. Reinhard Dorn’s
Brighella (the Sbirri chief) was stronger on comic action than vocal beauty,
but perhaps that was the point. He certainly contrasted well with the more
malevolent and indeed more complex Friedrich of Tuomas Pursio, whose stage
presence and vocal delivery exerted a fascination perhaps beyond the strict
merits of the score. Choral singing was of a high standard throughout,
especially so in the second act. We can safely assume, then, that, whatever
reservations might be voiced concerning the production, the Leipzig audience
had a far better opportunity to see and to hear something approaching Wagner’s conception,
however flawed, than the bewildered citizens of Magdeburg ever did, or Wagner
ever would.